Euronews

New Horizons is a fit name for the NASA spacecraft which, after a 4.9 billion and 9 1/2-year long journey in space, flew by Pluto. It is the first time a human-made object has ever been that close to the dwarf planet.

The craft flew by the distant “dwarf” planet today after reaching a region beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt, which was discovered in 1992. The achievement is the culmination of a 50-year effort to explore the solar system, Reuters reports.

“This stunning image of the dwarf planet was captured from New Horizons at about 4pm EDT on July 13, about 16 hours before the moment of closest approach,“Nasa wrote to describe the picture on Instagram. “The spacecraft was 476,000 miles (766,000 kilometers) from the surface.” Once snapped, the picture’s data, travelling at the speed of light, took 4.5 hours to get back to Nasa’s computers.

Below, you can see the progress in photographing the distant planet over the year.